


Where There Is Silence And Not Screaming

by BellumGerere



Series: A Wolf Among Lilacs [3]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Child Loss, Gen, Recovery from Attempted Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29015847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellumGerere/pseuds/BellumGerere
Summary: After the events of her final year at Aretuza, Yennefer stays with Regis temporarily while she tries to sort out her feelings and plans for the future.
Relationships: Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: A Wolf Among Lilacs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/801630
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Where There Is Silence And Not Screaming

**Author's Note:**

> wow y'all remember when i was like 'i'm going to write backstory one-shots for yennefer' and then i wrote one (1) and this has been in progress for like three years? well...here it is lskdjflskjf. i do still have others planned, but since they're not essential to understanding the main story (all will be revealed there eventually) they're kind of a backseat 'if i have time' project. this one worked perfectly with day 2 of febuwhump, though (the prompt was 'i can't take it anymore') so it's pulling double duty as a prompt fill there too
> 
> PLEASE mind the tags on this one, it deals with some things that haven't been talked about much in awal yet, and fairly directly at that -bel

> _“In my dream I can hear a baby being born. I can see its face, a pointy little face—so nice. I can see its hands—so nice, again. Its eyes are closed. It’s breathing, the little baby. It’s bleating. The baby and I are now walking to pasture. The baby is eating green grass with its soft and pink lips. My mother is shaking me by the shoulders…my mother can change everything. In my dream I am in the night.”_
> 
> -Jamaica Kincaid, “In the Night”

Regis had never owned a bed. Despite the fact that he fraternized with humans far more than many of his kind, he had never felt the need to keep up the charade to that extent; he simply never let anyone close enough for it to be worth it. But on the day Yennefer of Vengerberg packed up her personal belongings and took them from Aretuza, he went out and bought one. A full one, bigger than what she would be accustomed to in a shared room, and pillows and sheets and a black-and-white quilt. He arranged it all in a way he hoped looked lived-in, and prayed (with no small amount of guilt) that she would still be distracted by her own grief to the point where she wouldn’t notice.

After he’d deemed his temporary quarters in Gors Velen suitably human, he drove across the bridge to Thanedd, to the spot they’d arranged to meet. She was already there, sitting on a bench next to several suitcases, staring off into the distance. Rain was falling in a light drizzle, but it stopped short a few inches above her head, sliding in rivulets down an invisible barrier. Only when the car stopped in front of her did she focus on something—on him, as he got out of the car, holding an umbrella over his head that he’d actually brought for her. He should’ve known she’d find a way to get around needing one.

“How are you doing?” he asked as he sat beside her, in a space he wasn’t sure she’d left for him, or for anyone else. Her gaze darted away from him as she tugged the sleeves of her oversized sweatshirt down over her wrists. He’d gotten used to seeing her like this, to how she covered her face with her hair and closed herself in. Made herself as small as possible, so no one would look, no one would suspect that she was anything other than just another student. Now—especially now—that hadn’t changed.

She exhaled a little harshly, in what he presumed was supposed to be a laugh. “I’ve been better,” she said dryly. “But I’m here, and I’m alive, and that’ll have to be enough.”

He nodded. There wasn’t much else to say. After a minute he stood, reaching questioningly for one of her bags. When she picked the other one up and started to walk towards the car without looking back at him, he took it as a cue to follow. She climbed into the car, put the bag by her feet, and shut the door, perhaps a bit harder than she needed to, as he placed her other bag carefully in the back. She wasn’t taking much with her. He had come to the conclusion, over the months they’d spent in near-constant contact, that she didn’t have much to begin with.

The shutting of the driver’s side door felt loud in the quiet she’d built up around herself, and the engine sputtering to life even more so. Regis glanced over at her as he maneuvered the car out of Aretuza’s pitiful excuse for a parking lot, but she wouldn’t look at him. She seemed perfectly content to stare out the window at the rain hitting the water and ignore him completely. He supposed he would have to be fine with that. Were he in her situation, he wasn’t sure he’d feel like doing much talking either.

“I’ve prepared the main bedroom for you,” he said when they reached a stoplight at the end of the bridge. She turned, finally, to meet his eyes, though her expression remained impassive. “You’ll have it for as long as you need.”

Yennefer frowned, lips pressed together, and redirected her gaze to the road in front of them. He knew she would think it an unnecessary kindness, that, if she had the choice, she wouldn’t be leaving the academy’s grounds at all. She had made it quite clear that she wanted things to go on as normal, for the circumstances that had brought them to this moment to remain unspoken of. And he would have honored that desire, if she hadn’t taken that final step over the bridge. “Where will you sleep, then?” she asked.

“I have a couch.” She let out a displeased huff and didn’t dignify the words with a true reply. He would have to be careful about feigning sleep for however long she needed to stay with him—the thought had been worrying him since he’d made the offer. Yennefer was, above all things, keenly observant, and if anyone would be able to figure out what he was without any prompting, it would be her. “I do not mind sleeping on it.”

She took in a deep breath and held it for a moment before letting it out slowly. “I thought we weren’t going to make a big production out of this.”

“This isn’t making a big production.” The light turned and they jolted forward, perhaps a bit less smoothly than he’d intended, but it wasn’t that which was bothering her. He had to remind himself that the goal wasn’t necessarily to console her, though he would certainly do everything in his power to do so. No, it was far simpler: get her away from Aretuza. Keep an eye on her. “I merely want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

He received no reply to that, either. He wasn’t expecting one. But when he looked over he was grateful to see—even if only for the barest second—the hint of a smile.

~

The apartment was small, a modest two-bedroom on the third floor of a complex at the edge of the city, and fairly secluded, as well, which had always suited him just fine. He’d only come to the city to help Yennefer in the first place; he had no acquaintances there outside of her, and had been, for the most part, happy to keep it that way, even though it meant he was often isolating himself, something he didn’t like to do if he could avoid it. He was glad for it now, though, when Yennefer would need it most. It was, after all, the whole reason she had come with him.

He parked the car around the back of the building and took the larger of her bags from the backseat as she stood, arching her back slightly in a subtle stretch. The other bag went over her shoulder, and they ascended the stairs in a silence he had grown accustomed to. She stepped back when they reached his door, eyeing him nervously as he fished the key from his pocket and slotted it into the lock. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said as he opened the door. “No one will know you’re here.”

“I know.” She pressed her lips together, and he motioned her into the apartment in front of him. “But I’ve spent too much time lately in secrecy.”

There was a sadness in her voice he didn’t want to think too long on, so instead he took her other bag from her and set them both in the room he’d designated as hers. When he came back out to the living room, she hadn’t moved, staring at the bookshelves that lined the far wall. Her expression was incredulous when she turned to him. “You’re welcome to any of them, if you like,” he said, and tried to keep the sympathy in his tone to a minimum as he added “Since you’ll likely be here a while.”

She let out a soft exhale in reply to the last part of his statement, but otherwise ignored it, a fact for which he was secretly glad. “How did you manage to get all of these?” she asked. “Let alone bring them here. I doubt they would all fit in your car.” She nodded in the direction of the parking lot.

“You’d be surprised,” he said, a noncommittal response, but again, she didn’t seem interested enough to pursue that particular line of questioning—she didn’t seem interested in much of anything at all, and that worried him. He knew she wouldn’t get over what had happened right away, especially since it had not exempted her from Aretuza’s thesis requirements, and she was still expected to meet the same deadlines as everyone else. That wouldn’t be a problem for her; she’d always been a hard worker, at least for as long as he’d known her. But she also hadn’t been working under this particular kind of emotional stress. The things she’d been dealing with before were entirely different beasts from the ones she would be forced to deal with now.

Regis cleared his throat, shoving those thoughts away. He’d have to confront them eventually, yes, and so would she. But for now, it was more important that she got settled, and knew she was welcome there. He motioned back to the bedroom where he’d put her things. “I’ve prepared the larger bedroom for you,” he said. “I tried to think of anything you might need.” And he’d also done a thorough search of the apartment for particularly sharp objects, and emptied the medicine cabinet of everything except what was absolutely necessary to treat her, but he didn’t need to tell her that. Yennefer wasn’t stupid; she’d realize soon enough.

When he looked back from the bedroom door to her, she seemed unsure, brow furrowed, lips slightly parted. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, in a tone that indicated she would have rather he not bothered. He’d known that when he did it, but he still couldn’t think of a suitable response, one that wouldn’t run the risk of offending her.

“Yes, well. I wanted to.”

She raised one dark eyebrow, and the way the motion pulled at her skin revealed the circles under her eyes, the true depth of them. “You _wanted_ to? Or you felt like you _needed_ to?"

Again, a question for which he had no true answer. Soon, he hoped, she would get tired of running verbal circles and move on to talking about the things that actually mattered, but if there was anything he’d learned during his time aiding her, it was that she wouldn’t, not until she was forced to. He didn’t blame her for being afraid of her demons, per se, but the sooner he could coax her into facing them, the better for everyone involved. Running would only work for so long.

“Well.” He looked over at the sound of her voice. She was staring at him, reaching up to her neck out of habit, until she realized there was nothing there anymore, and dropped her hand. “Thank you. Truly. I…think I’ll try and get some rest now.”

He nodded, and watched her slip past him and through the open door without protest. If she wasn’t going to talk, sleep was the next best thing for her. It was just as important for her to heal physically now. “That would probably be best.”

She managed a small smile, and pushed the door closed until it was almost touching the frame, but not quite—likely in an effort to make him feel better about leaving her alone. He should, Regis thought, be touched by the fact that she even bothered to think of that, but it felt more like a false reassurance than anything else. He knew she was only doing so to placate him—and that thought was confirmed when he peeked through the door and saw her sitting on the edge of the bed, head in her hands and very clearly trying not to cry.

It wouldn’t be right to interrupt her, he thought—what was there for him to say, anyway? _I’m sorry the daughter you spent so much of your time and effort trying to protect was stillborn, and now you have to live with that for the rest of your presumably never-ending life?_ There were no words that would fix this, and Regis had always relied so heavily on words that the thought unsettled him. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He’d try again in the morning.

~

In the morning, not much was different except for the fact that Yennefer had closed the door to her borrowed room and refused to come out, even when he knocked. The only reply he’d gotten was a quiet “Not now,” and that had been several hours ago. He sat on the living room sofa, a thick leather-bound book open in his hands that he hadn’t been able to pay attention to for some time, and he waited. She had to come out eventually—right?

The only times he did hear the door open were when she slipped from the bedroom into the bathroom, and she would turn the overhead fan on as if she thought it would mask the sounds she made. For all she knew, it would—for all she knew, he was nothing more than a terribly good doctor—but he could hear her sniffling, could hear the sound of her peeling back bandages to examine her wounds and then trying to smooth them back in place. Every time she did, the small gasps of pain made him want to throw away everything he’d decided about allowing her privacy, so worried was he that she would truly hurt herself again in the process of trying to heal. But he wouldn’t allow himself to do that. He repeated to himself the same thing he’d been saying all day: that she would come out when she felt it was time.

He cooked. He didn’t need to eat in the same way humans did, but he occasionally enjoyed it nonetheless, and besides, now that he had someone else to look after, it made a fine excuse to stock up the apartment’s small and frankly lackluster kitchen, which he’d done only hours before coming to get her. He was glad she hadn’t decided to snoop around too much; the fact that all the food in the apartment was freshly-bought and unopened or unused would have been enough to raise questions from her. She had always been observant, even when he had first met her, a thirteen-year-old just barely clinging on to the threads of her life. How often had he seen her like that? More than he wanted to consider—and he’d be damned if he would let it happen again.

There wasn’t much in the kitchen in the way of things that could be made quickly, though, or things that would not end up going to waste if she decided she didn’t want to eat—an oversight on his part, but after digging through the now-full cupboards he settled on heating up a can of soup on the stove. Not the most extravagant of meals, but he doubted she would care, and besides, his sole concern lay in getting her to eat anything at all, which she had seemed reluctant to do these past few days. He understood her reasoning, but he couldn’t let it continue, either. He had promised he would look after her.

When the soup was done, he divided it into two bowls and left one steaming on the counter. The other he carried down the short hallway to the bedroom she’d taken over. Balancing it in one hand, he knocked softly on the door so as not to startle her. For a moment, he received no response, and that worried him more than the quiet refusal she had given him this morning. He could hear her moving behind the door, but that did little to quell his concern—she could have been doing anything. If it weren’t for the sharpness of his other senses, he would have feared that he’d missed something.

Yennefer finally cracked the door open after he knocked a second time, only pulling it far enough from the frame that he could see her face fully, and the line of the oversized t-shirt she was wearing. The shirt came to halfway down her thighs and her legs were bare below it, allowing him a view of the half-healed scars and bandages that still covered them. He had done what he could at the time, but Tissaia de Vries had insisted in no uncertain terms that they be left to heal on their own, at least for the most part—if Yennefer so chose, she could remove the scars later, at her own discretion. Part of him wondered if it hadn’t been meant as a choice, but as a punishment.

“Yes?” she asked, but then her eyes fell on the bowl in his hand and she seemed to understand. She pulled her lip between her teeth as she considered it, and he noted the scrapes and bruises on her arms as well; farther along on the journey to being healed than the ones on her legs, but only by necessity. They would be easier seen by others, and Tissaia had also made it clear that the last thing they wanted was for people to ask any unwanted questions. “That’s for me?”

He cleared his throat and held it out. The spoon clinked against the edge of the bowl. “Yes. If you don’t want it right now, I can save it, but—you will have to eat at some point. Even if you don’t want to.”

The smile that crept onto her face was a wry one, and as she opened the door wider she reached out to take the bowl from him. “You seem to be right more often than you’re not,” she said as her fingers curled around it. The bowl listed slightly to one side, and she brought her other hand up to steady it. The wrist was wrapped in bandages, but the old silvery scars on its twin were still visible, crisscrossed with new marks. She turned from the door and brought the bowl over to the newly-assembled nightstand, where she set it down and then glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes darted between him and the door, and he knew she was trying to decide whether or not she would close it in his face, as she had the night before. Eventually, though, she sat down on the bed without taking another step.

“I assume this isn’t all of it?” she said.

~

He brought the second bowl into the room and ate with her, perched carefully on the edge of the bed so as to give her as much space as he could. It was as good a way to throw off suspicion as any, and it allowed him to keep a closer eye on her besides. While eating wasn’t particularly pleasant for him—even beyond the act itself, he could taste metal, an issue only he would have—it was a small sacrifice to make. Yennefer watched him with a suspicious eye but said nothing. Perhaps she was afraid as he was that breaking the silence would only make things worse.

Regis didn’t know if she’d spoken to anyone else about what happened before he came to pick her up. They had all _been_ there, pacing back and forth in the miniscule common area of her and Triss’s room and trying to figure out what to do, but apart from a somewhat stilted conversation with Tissaia, there had been little communication. Of course, Tissaia had wanted to keep everything hushed; Aretuza’s reputation was at stake, after all, and if word got out that Yennefer had been given any kind of special treatment—well, he didn’t even want to think about what would happen then. He’d already gotten the impression that most of the other students who were to graduate with her didn’t like her all that much, though it had never seemed to bother her, either.

“You know I’m not made of glass,” she said as he was bringing one of the last spoonfuls to his mouth. He paused and set it back down in the bowl, directing his attention to her. She had already finished hers, a testament to how long it must have been since she’d eaten, and she held her own empty bowl loosely in her hands, fingers toying with the handle of the spoon. “I won’t shatter if you try to talk to me.”

No, he thought, she wasn’t made of glass—but she had looked _small_ splayed out on the rocks, small in a way he’d never seen her before. Without the raised eyebrows and half-smiles and wry comments, it was as though she’d been reduced to nothing. And Regis wasn’t a man who scared easily, but this—this scared him. Few of his run-ins with mortality had shaken him quite like this one. Not when she had fought so hard to keep herself alive.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? She hadn’t been fighting for herself. Not really.

Arguing with her, he had long since learned, was pointless, and now more than ever he didn’t want to run the risk of upsetting her, though it seemed his silence was accomplishing that on its own. “What would you have us talk about, then?”

“I don’t know.” She huffed a short, irritated laugh, took one of her hands off the bowl to wave it in a noncommittal gesture. “There are plenty of things we could talk about that aren’t—well.” Her lips pressed together, thinning briefly, before she continued. It was the closest either of them had come to acknowledgement. “Almost everything, in fact.”

He tilted his head in acknowledgement, though he knew—and he suspected she did as well—that there was nothing he could say here that would be appropriate. Any attempts to fill the silence with meaningless talk would fall flat, the words ring hollow. He could understand her desire for it, though. The silence would echo louder than anything he said. “Should I ask how your thesis is going, then? Or what your revised plans are for after graduation?”

It only takes a second for him to regret the words as he watches her face drain of emotion, the slight amusement that had been there only moments before slipping into something harsher, colder. “I see your point,” she said, though he hadn’t been trying to make one; they had simply seemed the only subjects worth bringing up. Yennefer had never been one for idle small talk, not for as long as he’d known her, though he supposed the silence would be more painful after this. Better to be a distraction than a reminder, though he had his doubts about how effective this approach would be in the long run. She would have to acknowledge it someday.

“Philippa says she knows someone.” She leaned over to set the bowl down on the nightstand, tucking one leg underneath her in the process. When her hands returned to her lap, they were restless, twisting together, and he could see the ragged edges of her nails where they’d been bitten. “Someone who’d be willing to take me on for an apprenticeship without asking too many questions. He’s something of a recluse, supposedly, but in this situation…”

She let the sentence trail off, but the conclusion is clear: if it works out, the situation would be ideal, would keep her away from prying eyes long enough for her physical wounds to heal, at least. He didn’t relish the thought of her staying with a stranger for all that time, but it was better than anything he’d come up with, and it would allow her to further her career at the same time—to do what was expected of her, though she’d never seemed much interested in that. “Have you met him at all?”

“No. I will at the commencement ceremony, if I’m able to attend.” The last part was tacked on through gritted teeth, and she turned towards the bedroom’s only window, studying the pattern the light streaming through the blinds made on the carpet. The room was rapidly dimming, the sun well on its way to set, and he stood, grabbing her bowl before she’d even had a chance to offer. She smiled in response, a small crook of her lips, but it was more than he’d expected, and if it meant she was stable enough to make it through the night, he’d take it.

~

He stayed up, just in case—it wasn’t as though he needed sleep, but the safest course of action would be to at least pretend to, have an excuse ready were she to wake up—but it turned out to be for nothing; either she was a quiet crier, which felt the more likely answer, or she actually had managed to get a full night’s sleep for the first time in nearly a month. She looked fine when he saw her in the dining room, seated at the table and surrounded by books and loose papers, and asking her how she slept only rewarded him with a shrug. When he inquired about breakfast, she said she’d eaten already, and there were plates in the kitchen sink that weren’t there the night before. He wanted to question it further—he hadn’t heard anything to indicate that she was cooking, let alone eating, no cabinets being opened—but they were already walking a fragile line; too much weight in one direction or the other might break it, so he decided to leave it be.

For the first week she stayed holed up in the apartment, it went like this: she “woke up” before him, showered, and claimed to have eaten when he made his way into the shared space of the dining room, though it was rapidly becoming her space. The table had been taken over by her research; the trickier enchantments would have to wait until she was able to return to Aretuza to use their equipment—a thought that he knew scared her, though she seemed content to ignore it—but the theory, the diagrams, they could all be worked on here. There was no real reason for her to worry about not graduating with the rest of her peers; she’d been wearing a rudimentary version of the pendant for months, after all, and it had worked well enough to keep her secret. The extra work she was putting into the final one could only strengthen it, especially with how careful she was being to keep certain stones apart. Still, it didn’t stop her from devoting her every waking hour for it, with the exceptions of forced breaks for lunch and dinner in which they would make painful small talk, or discuss how the thesis was going. She went to bed early, closed the door fully behind her, and he wouldn’t hear any particularly worrying sounds coming from her room.

This, of course, only made him worry more.

She had taken to borrowing books off his shelves in the evening, and he was thankful he’d hidden some of the ones that would make his nature more—obvious—back in his bedroom. Yennefer was smart enough to figure it out sooner or later, with or without the added help, but he wanted to put that day off for as long as possible. She didn’t need another thing to worry about right now, not when the cuts and bruises were finally starting to heal and she was closing in on her deadlines, all the pieces of the life she’d rebuilt falling into place—except one, and it was that jagged edge which he feared most. She hadn’t brought it up once. He wasn’t expecting her to. But it was only a matter of time before the pain became too much for her to handle on her own.

He had offered to listen if she wanted to talk about it, or to explain how the situation had come about in the first place—even he didn’t know the full story, only that he’d gotten a worried phone call from her one day months ago and ended up here. He knew Triss had said that Yennefer was free to speak to her, as had Tissaia, though Yennefer was furious at both of them, and he doubted they’d be hearing from her. Philippa’s similar offer had felt somewhat perfunctory, and they’d both seemed perfectly content knowing no heart-to-heart would ever come of it. She was doing more than the others, anyway, arranging an apprenticeship for Yennefer almost single-handedly in the middle of this, one that she confessed late one night was beginning to feel like her only option, if she wanted to keep her career intact. It was the most he’d gotten out of her; every other offer went ignored or politely declined.

As the days went on, though, the façade began to wear thin. He started to hear her crying at night, trying her best to muffle the sounds with her hand, a pillow; he couldn’t be quite sure, but it wasn’t enough. She worked later into the evenings, didn’t make as much of a show of getting breakfast in the mornings, and talked even less than she had been before, which wasn’t much. He started to ask, more often, if she was okay, his offers to talk beginning to border on insistence, and every time they were met with the same response. For another week, things continued like this, until the night he left to pick up groceries, having underestimated how much they would need, and returned to find she had locked herself in the bathroom.

As with every other night, he didn’t hear any sounds that immediately concerned him—in fact, he didn’t hear much of anything, which was at first infinitely more worrying. Upon listening closer, though, he could make out the steady beating of her heart, her quiet breathing, almost as if she were trying to avoid him despite there being no place here she could truly do that. If she’d wanted to leave, she easily could have, but she’d chosen to stay. That alleviated some of the anxiety that had gripped him, but it wasn’t enough. Her breaths, soft as they were, were unsteady as well, and when he knocked on the door and called for her through it, she didn’t answer right away. His hand rested loosely on the knob, poised to force the door open if need be, but a few moments later the sound of her pushing herself up off the floor came through, and it turned under his fingers.

The sliver of her face that he could see through the crack in the door was red, and so was the white of her violet eye, like she’d been crying; the raggedness of her breaths and the tight set of her lips indicated that was the case. “I didn’t know you’d be back so soon,” she said, and her voice was surprisingly steady considering the state she was in. The corner of her mouth twitched up, a self-deprecating hint of a grin, as if she were embarrassed to be caught showing any of the emotions he would expect from her. “That was…quick.”

One eyebrow raised, suspicious, but she opened the door enough that he could see the rest of her face, her other hand twisted in the too-long t-shirt she wore, its long sleeves pulled down over her wrists. It had been his advice to try not to look at the bruises, lest it seem like the healing, unaided by magic, was progressing at a snail’s pace, but now he wondered if that wasn’t making it worse—ignoring the evidence, as it were. Not looking meant no visible progress, and she’d already been cut off from the outside world for nearing on two weeks. “I didn’t want to stay away for too long,” he replied, forcing himself to sound as casual as possible. The last thing he wanted was to upset her into not talking; treating her like she was fragile would get them nowhere. But he couldn’t not ask. “How are you—?”

“Don’t.” Her hand tightened around the doorknob, knuckles paling with the force of it. “Don’t ask me how I am. The answer will be the same as it was yesterday, and the day before, and the day that I—” She stopped, took a breath. Always so good at controlling herself. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”

By the time she stopped, a small, tense smile had found its way to her face. It would have been reassuring, if it wasn’t so obviously a lie. “And what’s the real answer?”

His hand moved from the knob to press flat against the surface of the door. The direct approach was best with her, he’d learned over the past several months of working closely with her; the more one beat around the bush, the less likely they were to get a decent response from her—to get a response at all. Pushing any further, though, was just as likely to result in being shut out, and so he waited, watched as the grin slipped from her face and her eyes shut, lips parted as she took a breath. She would likely be too controlled to cry in front of him—not now that she’d had a little time to process her situation—but he was prepared for it in any case. He’d made it clear from the beginning that he had been willing.

Another breath, and she opened her eyes, looked right at him. “I can’t take this anymore,” she said, moving her own hand from the doorknob to the white counter beside her. “Tissaia contacted me earlier, to discuss me using the equipment in the labs for the final version of this.” Her free hand came out of her pocket to gesture at the pendant strung around her neck. “And the way she spoke to me—it’s quite clear she doesn’t want me to acknowledge any of what happened.” Another grin, more twisted than the last, gone in a heartbeat or two. “She’ll bury her in the empty courtyard and ward it against anyone else, but that’s the most anyone at the school will do.”

Silence hung in the air around them for a few seconds, and she pulled the door the rest of the way open, gesturing for him to step aside. He did, and followed her back to her bedroom, where she sat on the edge of the mattress and tucked one leg under her, just as she had the first night she spent there. It was eerie, almost, how similar the situations were; perhaps she had been healing well physically, but emotional wounds of this nature would take far longer to scar. “It’s ridiculous,” she said, and he could hear the tears thick in her throat. “That they expect me to just—”

She didn’t say anything else after that. After a few minutes the crying came, and when she turned to him he held her, concern for her finding out his true nature be damned, and together they waited it out. She didn’t ask for words of comfort, and he didn’t offer any. There was nothing more to be said or done.

~

After a while, she wore herself out, separating from him and crawling under the blankets, asleep a few minutes later. He left, then, closed the door behind her and cleaned what little there was to be straightened up, then retreated to his bedroom to wait out the night. The books he’d taken from the shelf would keep him occupied, though first he would have to calm the racing of his mind. This had been—a breakthrough, of sorts, since he’d expected her to be rather disengaged about the whole thing. The fact that she had been willing, if not to talk, then to disclose some of what she was feeling, was a sign that she was on the track to healing, albeit at the start of it.

In the morning, he waited until he heard her moving around in the kitchen to enter into the shared spaces. Her damp hair was pulled up at the back of her head, her short-sleeved shirt revealing a litany of mostly-healed bruises. She smiled when he came in, and turned back to the pan in front of her, where she was scrambling eggs. It was the first time he’d seen her actually eating in the morning—another sign that things were changing for the better. Any semblance of relief he’d felt vanished a few seconds later, though, when she turned her head back to him.

“You don’t cast a shadow,” she said, and he was so surprised he didn’t reply. Out of all the things he’d expected her to notice about him, that hadn’t been one, but to someone paying attention…

“I don’t.” The best thing to do, at this point, was to acknowledge it; she was too smart to be fooled by anything he came up with on the spot, and besides—part of him wanted to tell her. He certainly knew enough about her own life.

Yennefer took the pan off the stovetop and set it to the side, turning to him fully. “Most people would balk at the thought.” She sounded amused, arms crossed over her chest. “Having a higher vampire essentially deliver their child.”

“And you?”

She leaned back against the wall of the kitchen, looking more relaxed than she had since she first arrived, and smiled. “I think that this is the second time a higher vampire has saved my life.”

**Author's Note:**

> tbh i feel like this comes off as a cliffhanger but it's mostly because some of this will also be explored in awal proper and i don't want to do too much repeating myself. i need to check the notes i made about when in awal-time i'd planned to originally finish and post these, but i think the next one i'll finish is the one that introduces istredd, and after that it'll jump back a little to all the backstory that precedes this one. hopefully it won't take me another three years to write lsdkfjsldfjsklf


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